Jackaroo

The aim of the game

Your aim is to get all four of your marbles into your safe zone. Every marble follows the same road: it comes out of home and stands on your base, walks a full lap of the track, and when it comes back round to its own base it turns off into its safe zone and settles there.

Who wins depends on how you are playing:

• Four players in two teams: the winning team is the one that brings home all eight of its marbles, four from each partner. It is not enough for one partner to finish alone — they wait for their partner and help them, as explained below.
• Four players each for themselves, or two players: the winner is the first player to bring in their own four marbles.

Words you will meet often

These few words are all you need to follow the rest of this guide, and you will hear them inside the game as well:

• Marble: the piece you move. You have four marbles of one colour, and each is numbered, so the game will say "red 1" or "red 2".
• Home: where your marbles wait before they come out onto the track. Every marble starts the game there. A marble at home does not move and nothing can touch it, and only one kind of card brings it out.
• Base: a single cell on the track that is your colour's doorway. Your marble comes out onto it, and its lap ends back there.
• Cell: one position on the track. The track is a run of numbered cells, and a marble steps from one cell to the next.
• Safe zone: a short private lane at the end of your lap, with four places in it. Nobody else enters it, and once your marble is inside, nothing can touch it. Getting your marbles in there is how you win.
• The pile: the deck the cards are dealt from.
• Burning: throwing a card away from your hand without moving anything with it. It only happens in one situation, explained further down.

The board

Picture a single circular road that every player walks, all in the same direction. The road is divided into 76 cells, numbered 0 to 75. A marble walks from the lower numbers to the higher ones, and when it passes cell 75 it comes round to cell 0 and carries on.

Every colour has a base on this road, and the bases are spaced evenly:

• The red base is on cell 0.
• The blue base is on cell 19.
• The green base is on cell 38.
• The yellow base is on cell 57.

So there are nineteen cells between one base and the next. If there are only two of you, you sit opposite each other: red on cell 0 and green on cell 38.

Your safe zone is not on the road. It is a side lane that begins where your lap ends, with four places numbered 1 to 4, place 4 being the deepest. Every colour has its own.

So the journey of a single marble goes like this: it comes out of home onto your base, walks 75 cells along the road — a full lap but one cell — until it reaches the cell just before your base. Its next step after that takes it into your safe zone, at place 1.

You do not have to memorise where the bases are. Whenever the game describes a marble standing on a base, it tells you whose base it is, and it gives you the cell number on every move.

Setting up a table

The game is played by two players or by four, and by no number in between. A table will not start with three.

If there are four of you, the table owner picks one of two ways to play:

• Teams: two against two, with partners sitting opposite each other, so each of them has an opponent on either side.
• Every player for themselves: no partners at all.

The owner also picks which version the match is played under: the regular one, or complex mode, in which six things change — they are listed at the end of this guide. The version is announced to everybody at the start of the match, so that no player is caught out by it in the middle of the game.

Each player is then given a colour according to their seat and told what it is, their four marbles start at home, the cards are shuffled, the first hand is dealt and play begins.

You can fill any empty seats with bots if you cannot find players, and you can save the table and come back to it later exactly as you left it.

The cards

The game uses a full deck of fifty-two cards. The first thing to know is that the suit does not matter in Jackaroo: all four suits are the same, and a 7 is a 7 whichever suit it comes from. Only the rank counts, because the rank is what decides the move.

The walking cards

These simply mean a number of steps forward, taken by one of your marbles that is already out on the track:

• The 2 walks two cells. The 3 walks three. The 5 walks five. The 6 walks six.
• The 8 walks eight cells. The 9 walks nine. The 10 walks ten.
• The queen walks twelve cells, which is the longest walk in the regular version.

The cards with a job of their own

These five cards do more than walk, and each one has its own section further down:

• The ace: brings a marble out of home, or walks a marble one cell, or walks it eleven cells. You choose which of the three.
• The king: brings a marble out of home. That is all it does in the regular version.
• The 4: four cells backwards. It is the only card in the game that walks a marble in reverse.
• The 7: seven cells for one marble, or split between two of your marbles.
• The jack: swaps one of your marbles with another player's marble, each taking the other's place.

How a turn goes

A turn in Jackaroo is short and straightforward:

1. Your turn comes and you look at the cards in your hand.
2. You press the card you want to play.
3. The game asks you about whatever choices that card offers: what it should do, if it does more than one thing; which marble it should move; and where to. If the card offers only one thing, it is played without any question.
4. The move is carried out and you hear it step by step, and then you and the rest of the table are told what happened: where the marble ended up, and whose marble was sent home if anybody's was.
5. The card played is discarded, and the turn passes to the player after you.

The turn goes round like this until every hand is empty, a new hand is dealt, and play carries on until a player or a team wins.

What the game tells you while you choose

You are not expected to hold the board in your head. Every option offered to you comes with what you need to judge it:

• The marble's name, where it is standing now, and whose base it is on if it is standing on one.
• The cell this move would land it on.
• Whose marble would be sent home by the move, and you are told plainly if the marble sent home would be your own or your partner's.
• Who would be ahead of you and who would be behind you after the move, and how many cells away.

A move that is not allowed is never offered in the first place. Everything you see in the list can be done, so you never have to try something and wait to see whether it is refused.

An example first turn

Say you are playing red, all four of your marbles are at home, and your hand is a king, a 6, a 4 and a 9.

1. The 6, the 9 and the 4 are no use to you yet, because you have no marble on the track to move with them.
2. So you play the king. The game asks you nothing, because in the regular version a king does exactly one thing: it brings a marble out.
3. Your marble comes out and stands on your base, which is cell 0, and the table is told that red 1 has come out of home.
4. On your next turn, playing the 6 would walk that marble to cell 6, and playing the 9 would walk it to cell 9.
5. And if you bring a second marble out with another ace or king, you have two marbles on the track — and now every walking card in your hand is worth more, because each one gives you two choices instead of one.

The rules of movement

A marble does not move however it likes. Five rules govern every move, and they are the heart of the whole game: understand them and you understand Jackaroo. We will take them one at a time.

1. The count is exact

A card walks your marble its full number, no more and no less. You cannot walk part of a card and keep the rest, and a marble cannot overshoot the end of its safe zone and come round again.

This means that the closer a marble gets to the end of its road, the fewer cards are any use to it. A marble with three steps left to the last place of its safe zone can walk one, two or three — but no card larger than that will do, because it would carry the marble past the end of the lane. Such a move is simply never offered to you.

2. Never pass a marble of your own colour

If there is another marble of your own colour in your marble's path, your marble may not walk over it and carry on. This holds going forwards and going backwards alike.

It may, however, land on it, that is, finish exactly there. And when it does, that marble of yours goes back home and starts its road again, sent there by your own hand. So watch for it.

Marbles of other colours you may walk over as you please. Only the next two rules stop you.

3. A marble standing on its own base cannot be touched

Once a marble comes out and stands on the base of its own colour, it has the strongest protection in the game: nobody can walk over it, nobody can land on it, and no card of any kind can shift it. That applies to everybody, its own owner included.

Which means a marble on its own base blocks the road for every colour coming up behind it. They reach it and can go no further. This is one of the most useful things you can do: bring a marble out and leave it standing on your base, and you cut the road on your opponents and guard your own doorway at the same time.

Do not forget that the protection ends the moment you move that marble off its base — after that it is like any other marble.

4. A wall cannot be passed

A wall is two marbles standing on two neighbouring cells of the track. When that happens, the front one of the pair becomes protected: nobody may walk over it and nobody may land on it.

Three things about walls are worth noticing:

• A wall does not need one colour. Two neighbouring marbles of different colours are a wall too, even if one is yours and the other your opponent's. So you may build your opponent a wall without meaning to.
• The back marble is exposed. A wall protects the front one only; the one behind it can be landed on and sent home. So if you want to break a wall, aim at the back marble.
• Three or more marbles in a row: every neighbouring pair inside the run is a wall, so the only one left exposed is the very last marble at the back.

5. A safe zone cannot be entered or touched

A safe zone belongs to one colour alone, so no other player passes through it on their way and none may enter it. And a marble that has settled inside is beyond reach: it cannot be landed on, cannot be swapped, cannot be pulled out. Once it is in, it is safe for the rest of the match.

Capturing: how marbles get sent home

There is only one way to capture in Jackaroo: a marble lands on a cell that another marble is standing on. The one that landed stays; the one that was standing there goes back home and starts its road from the beginning. It is the biggest loss in the game, because that marble may have walked half a lap or more.

Three things shape how capturing works:

• Passing does not capture; landing does. Marbles you walk over on your way come to no harm. Only the marble your move ends on exactly is sent home. (The king in complex mode is the one exception, and it is covered below.)
• Capturing does not care about colour. You send your opponent's marble home, you send your partner's marble home, and you send your own marble home if you land on it. That is why the game tells you before you choose whether a move would send home a marble of yours or your partner's, and why you hear a different sound when it does.
• Three marbles can never be captured: one standing on its own base, the front marble of a wall, and one that has reached its safe zone.

An example of a wall and a capture

Your red marble is standing on cell 30. Ahead of it, on cells 31 and 32, are two blue marbles side by side. Your hand holds a queen and an ace.

1. The two blue marbles are a wall, and the front one is the marble on cell 32.
2. If you wanted to play the queen on your marble, you could not: it walks twelve cells, and its path runs over the protected cell 32. So that move is never offered to you.
3. But if you play the ace as one, your marble lands on cell 31 — the exposed back marble — and that blue marble goes home.
4. The wall is broken by that, and the blue marble on cell 32 is now exposed in its turn to whoever comes along next.
5. And if the marble on cell 32 had been standing on its own base, nothing would have worked against it: no passing, no landing, no card at all.

The safe zone and getting into it

When your marble nears the end of its lap — that is, when it reaches the cell just before your base — its next step takes it into your safe zone at place 1. From there it moves up through the places with cards just as it moved along the track: place 1 to 2, then 3, then 4.

Three rules govern this lane:

• The count is exact here too: you may not go past place 4. A marble on place 3 can only be moved by a card worth one step. And the same holds for a marble not yet inside: if it is two steps from place 1, then a 2 puts it on place 1 and a 5 puts it on place 4, while a 6 is no use at all, because it would carry it past the end of the lane.
• There is no going back from safety: a 4 cannot pull a marble out of its safe zone, and cannot move it backwards inside it. Movement in the lane is forwards only.
• Your marbles cannot pass each other in here either, so order their arrival. The first marble in should go as deep as it can, the next one stops short of it, and so on. If you leave your first marble on place 1, you have shut the door on the other three.

This is one of the commonest beginner's mistakes: being pleased at getting the first marble in, leaving it on place 1, and then finding there is no way to bring the rest.

The special cards in detail

The ace and the king: how marbles come out

A marble only comes out of home on one of two cards: an ace or a king. Which means that at the start of the game, with all your marbles at home, no other card in your hand is any use to you.

The marble comes out onto your base, and two things follow from that:

• If a marble of your own colour is already standing on your base, you cannot bring another one out, because that marble cannot be landed on, as we saw. Move it along first, then bring the next one out.
• If another player's marble is on your base as it passes through, your marble comes out, lands on it and sends it home. In the regular version this is your only way of clearing somebody off your doorway.

The ace does everything the king does and one thing more: it can walk a marble that is already out, either one cell or eleven. So it is a useful card in every situation, which is a reason not to spend it too soon.

When you play an ace as a walk, the game tells the table which value you played it as, because the name of the card alone does not say.

The 4: the short road

The 4 walks your marble four cells backwards. It looks like a weak card and it is in fact one of the strongest, and the reason is that the track is a circle.

A marble standing on your base has a whole lap ahead of it — seventy-five cells — before it reaches its safe zone. Play a 4 on it and it steps four cells back, so that it now stands in the cells just before your base. Which means it is four steps from place 1 of your safe zone instead of seventy-five.

That is the fastest road in the whole game: bring a marble out with a king, play a 4 on it, and it has all but arrived.

Two things to keep in mind:

• Walking backwards follows the same rules as walking forwards: you may not pass a marble of your own colour, nor a marble standing on its own base, nor the front marble of a wall.
• A marble that leaves its base loses its protection, so it can be captured like any other, and it no longer blocks the road for anybody. Weigh the two against each other.

The 7: the card that splits

The 7 is the nimblest card in the game, because you can spend it on two of your marbles instead of one. Give one of them five cells and the other two, or six and one, or any split you like as long as they add up to seven. You may also spend the whole of it on a single marble, like any other card.

The game asks you about the split in three questions: which marble moves first, where it goes and how much is left for the second, and then which marble takes the rest.

The most important thing to understand about the 7 is that the order matters. The first marble moves, and the second marble's move is then judged on the board after the first one has moved. So a split can be legal in one order and illegal in the other.

An example: you have a marble settled in your safe zone on place 1, and another marble on the track five steps short of your safe zone entrance, and a 7 in your hand.

1. If you started with the track marble, you would want to walk it five steps into place 1. But place 1 is occupied by your other marble, and a marble in a safe zone can neither be landed on nor passed. So that move is not allowed.
2. So you start with the marble already in safety and walk it two steps, from place 1 to place 3.
3. That leaves five steps of the seven, which you walk with the track marble — and it enters place 1, now empty.
4. So one card brought a marble in and moved another one closer. In the other order the move would not have been possible at all.

The jack: swapping

The jack takes one of your marbles standing on the track and puts it where another player's marble is, putting that marble where yours was. It walks nobody and sends nobody home; it simply exchanges two positions.

Its use is to take a good position and hand your opponent a poor one, or to lift your own marble out of danger.

A swap only happens between two marbles that are both out on the track. Four kinds of marble are therefore out of reach:

• A marble still at home.
• A marble that has entered its safe zone.
• A marble standing on the base of its own colour.
• The front marble of a wall.

And watch out for one case that catches people: if an opponent's marble is standing on your base as it passes through, you are allowed to swap with it. But doing so puts your own marble back at the very start of the road, losing its whole lap however far it had come, and hands your opponent the advanced position your marble had reached. The game warns you of this in the description of the move before you choose it.

Burning

Your turn may come when you cannot move anything at all: your marbles are at home and you hold no ace and no king, or your marbles are on the track but every card you hold runs into a wall or a base, or would carry a marble past its safe zone. Since a turn cannot simply be skipped, there is burning.

To burn is to throw a card away from your hand without moving anything, and the turn passes to the next player.

Two rules govern it:

• Playing is compulsory. As long as a single card in your hand produces a legal move, you must play. You may not burn because you think every move available to you is a bad one. That is why your hand is only offered to you as a burn when there is not one move in it.
• Burning the whole hand. If all your marbles are at home and you hold no card that brings one out, then there is nothing you can do for the rest of this deal and no point in waiting on anybody else. Your whole hand is burned at once and you are out until the next hand is dealt. The cards you burned are read out to the table.

The difference between the two cases is that if you have a marble on the track, another player may open a road for it before the deal ends, by moving whatever was blocking you. So you are only stuck for this one turn, and burn a single card.

The deal and the pile

Cards are dealt in batches, and a new batch is only dealt once every player's hand is empty.

• With four players: four cards are dealt, then four, then five. That is thirteen cards each over the cycle, which spends all fifty-two cards exactly.
• With two players: four cards in every deal.

When the pile runs out, all the cards that have been played and burned are gathered up and shuffled into a fresh pile, and the deal moves on to the next seat.

Running out of cards is not the end of anything: no marble goes home, nothing is scored, and the match does not stop. A match only ends when somebody wins.

Your partner

This section applies to team play only.

If you get your four marbles into your safe zone, you do not leave the game and you do not sit and wait. You go on being dealt cards every hand and playing them as before, except that you play them on your partner's marbles. The team then has two hands moving four marbles, which speeds it up enormously.

The table is told when this happens: that so-and-so has finished their marbles and is now playing on their partner's.

The team does not win until all eight marbles are in. In the every-player-for-themselves game and in the two-player game there are no partners, and whoever finishes their four marbles wins there and then.

Complex mode

Complex mode is the same game, and everything above still holds. Six things change, and they make the game fiercer and faster:

• The king sweeps: it brings a marble out as it does in the regular version, or it walks a marble thirteen cells and sends home every marble it passes along the way, not just the one it lands on. It is the most violent move in the game, and it can send three or more marbles home in one stroke.
• The king breaks walls: the sweep alone may pass the front marble of a wall, and it sends that marble home with the rest.
• The king passes your own marbles: which it has to, or it would stop at the first marble of your own colour. But beware: the sweep sends your own marbles and your partner's home too if they are in its path. Count before you play it.
• The 5 moves any marble: you may walk any player's marble five cells with it — your own, your partner's or your opponent's — as long as it is out on the track. You cannot, however, bring an opponent's marble into its safe zone: you may push it along the track, but you may not deliver it home, and such a move is never offered to you.
• The 10 forces a burn: played that way, the player after you is forced to burn a card of their own choosing and loses their turn. You can still play it as an ordinary ten cells if that suits you better. And if there is nobody after you still holding cards, it is ten cells and nothing else.
• Bases become even safer: a marble standing on its own base cannot be moved by anybody's 5, not even its owner's, and the king's sweep cannot touch it. It remains the safest square on the board even in this version.

Tips for your first match

• Get more than one marble out. While you have only one marble on the track, most of your cards are wasted on you. The more marbles you have out, the more choices every card gives you.
• Keep hold of a 4. Spend it on a marble standing on your base and it cuts out the whole road.
• Do not leave a marble on your base too long for no reason. It is protected there and it blocks the road, but it is not getting any closer to home. A base is worth holding when an opponent is close behind you.
• Look at who is behind you. The game tells you who will be behind you and how many cells away. If your marble ends up twelve cells ahead of an opponent, know that a single queen in their hand sends it home.
• Build walls. Two of your marbles side by side protect the front one and block the road for everybody else.
• Order your arrivals in the safe zone. Push the first marble as deep as you can, or it will shut out the ones behind it.

Controls and shortcuts

The iPhone gesture is always the same as the Android one with three fingers instead of two.

Reading out the board opens a list you move through line by line, holding everything there is to know about the table: every player by name and colour with the number of cards in their hand, who is out of the current deal, then each of their four marbles one by one and where it stands, and at the end of the list how many cards are left in the pile. It costs you nothing and changes nothing, so use it as often as you like.

Playing a card needs no shortcut: press the card in your hand and the game asks you about whatever choices it offers.

Things worth knowing

• There are no points in Jackaroo and no leaderboard — it is a race, won or lost. What you see on the score panel is how many marbles each player has brought into their safe zone, along with how many have to be brought in to win.
• Every marble's move is heard step by step, so you know the distance by ear before you are told it. Each team has its own step sound, and there are separate sounds for moving backwards, for a capture, and for entering a safe zone.
• If you press a card that cannot be played, or press when it is not your turn, you hear a sound turning you back and nothing changes in your hand or on the board.
• Cards already played cannot be reviewed. You have the last card and nothing further back, as it would be at a real table.
• If a player drops out, a bot takes their seat, so the match does not stop.